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The liberals have entered the electoral fray

It has been a long and difficult journey to get a liberal party up and running. Despite my initial optimism twenty years ago about such an endeavour, it was never going to be easy. Socialism is deeply entrenched in the Indian mind and electoral politics is extraordinarily dirty, with voters being so disenchanted with the system that many of them use elections mainly to grab freebies.

Naturally, there have been very few serious efforts in India to fight for liberty, against socialism. I believe that till our party was formed, there was not even a full-fledged liberal party in India. Yes, there was Rajaji and Masani’s Swatantra Party and Sharad Joshi’s Swatantra Bharat Party, but the kind of defence of liberty and policies for good governance that are found in SBP’s manifesto were not part of these previous initiatives.

Swatantra Party had significant leaders and was supported by JRD Tata who was fed up with Nehru’s hatred for private enterprise. So it did reasonably well but after 15 years, it folded in 1974. As far as Sharad Joshi’s Swatantra Bharat Party is concerned, it managed to get a few seats in the Maharashtra Assembly but has languished for the past decade. Without a JRD Tata to support us and without even a grassroots leader like Sharad Joshi, our party faces an almost insurmountable task.

Despite these challenges, I’m delighted that the liberals have entered the electoral fray, although not with a bang but with a whimper. Rahul Pandit, our party’s Working President, contested the Malkajgiri Assembly seat in Hyderabad in the recent Telangana elections – and lost.

The challenges in Malkajgiri were unbelievable. Rahul has a full-time day job, so has worked on the party only in his spare time. It will take time to build the kind of party organisation that wins elections. And the major parties did not play fair, doling out cash to voters. Rahul himself received requests for money from voters, which he politely declined.

Despite the expected loss, we did achieve a number of objectives. Our main purpose was to understand how to nominate a party candidate and prepare administratively for future elections. We also fulfilled the requirement for a newly registered party to contest a seat within the first five years.

Second, we learnt how to run a real election campaign. I was amazed at the enthusiasm and energy of Rahul Pandit and his team during the campaign that commenced after the nomination was accepted. It took time to create posters and banners with the election symbol, and then to conduct a door-to-door campaign. A cut-out of the allocated symbol (neck tie) was mounted on the back of a jeep and paraded across the constituency.

A handful of SBP leaders from other parts of India also joined the campaign to gain experience that will be invaluable to them in organising their own elections in the coming months. From 2019 we hope to contest elections more regularly.

A major benefit of contesting the election was that thousands of voters of Malkajgiri got to hear first hand about the evils of socialism and benefits of liberty. I’m sure many of them will, in the future, fondly recall their first contact with our party which considers the government the people’s servant, and wants the government to only perform a few functions, but to perform them well.

To me the greatest achievement of Rahul Pandit was that he showed by example why the liberals must enter the democratic process and not simply sit on the sidelines and complain. One has to be in the ring to win.